We’ve all been there – returning home from holiday with a pocket full of miscellaneous coins that we’ll never use again. But if only there was some company had paid for some PR to get an article into the paper to tell us about a better way?!

Kevin Jenkins, of finance giant Visa Europe, which quizzed 2,000 people on their holiday spending, said: ‘Holidaymakers could be saving money instead of returning home with foreign currency, which likely remains unused and gathering dust. This hard-earned money could be better put to use or donated to charity.

It’s little surprise to see people spending money on their lunch each day, although the amount does seem a little high for work snacks. How precisely does that figure break down?

The survey of more than 2,100 British commuters found they typically spend £3.69 buying lunch, £2.09 on hot drinks and £7.09 if they pop to the supermarket during a break to stock up on food and drink for the evening.

Remarkably, the “£2500 per year on work snacks” includes buying food and drink in the supermarket for when you get home after work. In fact, percentage-wise, the majority of that £2500 of snacks for the working day is food not actually intended for the working day at all – it’s right there in the article!

Also right there in the article is the identity of the company who paid for this ‘research’ to make the papers:

The research for Visa Contactless found that on average, the amount that people who travel to work spend on these small and regular purchases adds up to £10.59 a day.

Visa, of course, have a clear incentive to make us aware of how often we make small payments like this:

The rise in contactless technology, which allows people to make small payments by swiping a reader with their card, means more than 300,000 terminals across the UK now accept such payments.